Wikipedia researchers: Who they are and how they shape the world's largest encyclopedia

When you read a Wikipedia article, you’re seeing the result of decades of work by Wikipedia researchers, scholars and analysts who study how knowledge is created, contested, and maintained on the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Also known as Wikimedia researchers, they don’t just use Wikipedia—they study its inner workings to make it better, fairer, and more reliable for everyone. These aren’t just academics in labs. Many are librarians, data scientists, students, and even long-time editors who noticed patterns in edits, conflicts, or broken links and asked: Why does this happen? How can we fix it?

Wikipedia researchers look at everything: how Wikipedia editing, the act of adding, correcting, or removing content by volunteers changes over time; how Wikipedia policy, the rules that guide what can be written and how it should be sourced affects who gets heard; and how tools like bots, A/B tests, and TemplateWizard actually help or hurt contributors. They’ve shown that mobile editing increases participation from Global South users, that conflict of interest edits often come from institutions trying to shape their own image, and that local news sources are vanishing from articles in regions where newspapers have shut down. Their work isn’t theoretical—it directly shapes the tools you use and the rules you follow.

What you’ll find in this collection isn’t a list of dry studies. It’s real-world insight from people who’ve dug into the data, talked to editors, and watched how Wikipedia actually works on the ground. You’ll see how researchers helped design the mobile editor to reduce errors, how they exposed sockpuppet networks manipulating geopolitics, and how they proved that strict sourcing standards can stop AI from spreading lies. This isn’t about citations in journals. It’s about making sure the next person who looks up a fact finds something true, balanced, and useful.